The Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives

All Blog Posts (767)

Podcast interview with Michel Bauwens

I met Michel Bauwens at UrbanLabs which took place at Citilab in Cornellà, Barcelona. He kindly agreed to record an interview for the PodCamp Barcelona Podcast, but due to his hectic schedule it was impossible to do until recently. I finally caught up with Michel when he was in Amsterdam and we recorded this conversation over… Continue

Added by Chris Pinchen on January 16, 2009 at 19:05 — No Comments

Kevin Carson writes to Obama

Contribution from Kevin to Change.gov, you can vote for it here: http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/ideas/viewIdea.apexp?id=087800000004xQ3

Easing the Transition to an Alternative Economy

"If we want to replace the present centralized economy of waste production and planned obsolescence, it's an inescapable fact that a great deal of excess manufacturing capacity cannot be saved. In my opinion it's a mistake to try to prop it up through expedients like the… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on January 16, 2009 at 8:08 — No Comments

A new language for hackers?

Conference Review,via Tatiana Bazzichelli

(from IDC mailing list, January 2008)

* A Reflection on the Activist Strategies in the Web 2.0 Era: Towards a new language criticism, by Tatiana Bazzichelli:

"I would like to share with the IDC readers a personal review of the past Activism-Hacking-Artivism Camping, the first collective meeting of the Italian aha@ecn.org mailing-list, which focuses on hacktivism and netculture. I would also like to propose some… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on January 16, 2009 at 7:58 — No Comments

Gapminder, a very powerfull tool

Amigos, the graph you are seeing illustrates

my last post, it was done with the

Gapminder

.…

Continue

Added by Carlos Boyle on January 15, 2009 at 12:55 — No Comments

Renew America together

Wach these videos, then you will understand that Obama bets to social networks hard.

Let us see the real impact on january 19th journey.

The trhee words moto Renew America together joins "renew" and "together" through America.

The phrase can be slplit in two: "Renew America", you Renew America and "America together", let us all go together. Obama and his wife will be present on that journey, they´ll all renew America… Continue

Added by Carlos Boyle on January 13, 2009 at 19:14 — No Comments

Broadband takes to the skies

This is a recent item on BBC news, describing how airplanes will be connected linking up to satellite broadband, allowing passengers access to the internet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7822430.stm

So my wife asked an interesting question: What about using the airplanes as a network forming relay to give internet connectivity to those on the ground?

Although not a stable connection when… Continue

Added by Sepp Hasslberger on January 11, 2009 at 17:41 — No Comments

Research positions related to commons-based strategies in various industries

Via Matthew Cooperrider:

From: Solon Barocas

To: DCC Idea Exchange

Subject: [mcc-talk] Yochai Benkler Cooperation Research Opportunities

Please, help me to circulate this among your friends, students and networks.

Thank you. Carolina

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/getinvolved/internships/cooperation

Cooperation Research RA Opportunities

Cooperation Project Research Opportunities: 3 positions

The Cooperation Project is a Berkman… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on January 9, 2009 at 12:27 — No Comments

New TV Show Spotlights Do it Yourselfers – Like You

Have you adapted some object to better suit your purpose? Perhaps it was a peer2peer creation.

Would your or "our" invention delight and inspire others? Get featured on TV, via computer and in a magazine, thanks to a new Me2We joint venture. Make magazine invited American Public… Continue

Added by Kare Anderson on January 5, 2009 at 22:30 — No Comments

Musicians can prosper in the age of free music

Thomas Greco alerted me to an interesting overview blog posting by Eyal Matsliah, who reviews different income streams for music practitioners providing their basic music for free.

Eyal writes:

"I've written a paper about music sharing in which I make the claim that music sharing actually adds to the value of the music, and that even if music is shared freely, musicians can still support themselves through many other income streams:

donations, legal downloads,… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on January 5, 2009 at 9:29 — 1 Comment

The Iroquois Gens

You may have read Frederick Engels’ book Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State written in 1884. I’ll be glad if you pay attention to chapter three based on the Lewis H. Morgan’s investigations about the Iroquois Indians of the Grate lakes of North America, specially this chapter "The Iroquois… Continue

Added by Carlos Boyle on January 3, 2009 at 18:08 — No Comments

DIYNGO: using renewable energy for ICT expansion in developing countries

Via Tim Barker:

Hello everyone! I hope all are well? Since Tim and Michel have both recently asked for a quick update on DIYNGO to help disseminate our work, please find below a short text I just wrote. It was a little hurried but I think encapsulates where we are at for the time being. If you have any comments please do let us all know - you could hit "reply to all"? It would also be nice if we could please consider having a group chat or a group Skype call or some such please as… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 30, 2008 at 1:13 — No Comments

City as a grid: call for contributions (inter-linking)

Hi Folks,

The City-as-a-grid project aims at producing and studying several P2P scenarios that could happen in the next century's cities, on a resource creation/consumption level and with a focus on real-life projects. A strong dichotomy will separate local and global scales, with an emphasis on local scale (local/global layers).

Local scale focuses on what the inhabitants of an elementary-sized unit (called "Cell") have to provide to make the community autonomous. It is… Continue

Added by Florent Thiery on December 22, 2008 at 17:40 — 3 Comments

P2P Energy Economy: critical feedback requested

As you may know, I've been developing a sustainable model for an abundance-based P2P economy where the value of money is derived from renewable energy, and where "the more you share the more you have" is the principle for wealth creation.

I've had a lot of discussions that helped me evolve the model to the stage where it's ready for serious debate.

The following are the main propositions of the model:

1. Direct the flow of money towards socially, ecologically… Continue

Added by Evolving Trends on December 19, 2008 at 20:10 — 8 Comments

An appeal to develop a new p2p business metric

We are reproducing this important appeal by French researcher Serge Soudoplatoff.

See also for more background at http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Metrics and http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/P2P-Metrics

Contact via serge at almatropie.org

Serge Soudoplatoff:

“I am a French researcher, professor, and entrepreneur working on the topic of the impact of Internet in real life : on business, corporate, customer relationship, etc…

I would… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 18, 2008 at 15:59 — No Comments

Solidarity Economy conference in Austria; February 2009

Via Dante-Gabryell Monson :

http://www.solidarische-oekonomie.at/

20.-22. Febr. 2009

Vienna, 1180 Peter-Jordan-Straße 82, Boku

" Everybody is invited to arrange workshops, open group discussions, films, performances, etc.

We´d like to suggest to use participative formats rather than frontal lectures.

Alongside a very agile globalization-critical movement many different projects of a solidarity economy gain importance. Our hope… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 18, 2008 at 15:45 — No Comments

A new chapter is available in the Ethical Economy book project: Ch 2. The Ethical Economy is Already Here

Via Adam Arvidsson:

Ch 2. The Ethical Economy is Already Here:

This chapter analyses a number of pertinent contemporary phenomena, like knowledge and brand management, the problem of ‘intangibles’ and the increasing recourse to user led innovation and other forms of Open Business, to argue that, at least in this cutting edge manifestations, the contemporary information economy is no longer ‘capitalist’ in the strict sense of that term . Instead corporations… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 17, 2008 at 11:13 — No Comments

Juan Freire - From the Analogue Commons to the New Hybrid Public Spaces

Here there is an old post that is the traduction of the juan Fraire's conference in november 2007. It´s abou my new project Topia "places".

By Regine

"Back in November i was at Medialab Prado in Madrid to visit the Visualizar workshop and i had the pleasure to hear the talk that Juan Freire gave there. I was really looking forward to know better about the thoughts… Continue

Added by Carlos Boyle on December 16, 2008 at 0:00 — No Comments

Volunteer computing at BOINC

Via Stefan Merten:

Hi list!

You may have heard of `SETI@home`_. Several years ago this project

asked volunteers all over the Internet to donate their excess

computing power to search for signals from extraterrestrial life

forms.

Today there is BOINC_ which makes such `volunteer computing`_ projects

easy and gives them a common technical platform:

Use the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) to cure

diseases,… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 15, 2008 at 9:22 — No Comments

Book review of: Cyber Conflict and Global Politics

Just published by kevin carson, list member: http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2008/12/book-review-cyber-conflict-and-global.html

Thanks for forwarding and supporting the members of our research community!!

Book Review: Cyber Conflict and Global Politics

Athina Karatzogianni, ed. Cyber Conflict and Global Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 2009).

Athina Karatzogianni's work first came to my attention through her participation in the P2P… Continue

Added by Michel Bauwens on December 10, 2008 at 17:08 — No Comments

Basic P2P collaboration research.

I have started a meetup group to explore existing and future P2P collaboration tools for organizing group efforts. It is located here.

1st: We catalogue existing software tools with an eye towards some basic requirements:

Free

OS independent

No Server Required

Easy but secure encryption

White Board

Text Chatting

Concurrent or plug-in voice and/or video handling.

File sharing… Continue

Added by Tom Loeber on December 9, 2008 at 18:00 — 2 Comments